City Lights bookstore in San Francisco is publishing these Selected Poems, with Red Poppy, featuring a Prefatory Note by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
There have been many Pablos in history, and Pablo Neruda is one to exceed Picasso in the prolific production of great works, as well as in the depths of his proletarian empathies.
I met this Pablo in the Hotel Havana Libre (once the Havana Hilton) in 1959 in the first days of revolutionary euphoria, and that night he spoke his poetry to several thousands of multi-ethnic Fidelistas (still in combat clothes) in the great government hall where the late dictator had held forth. His rapport with the masses was evident in every poem he spoke (with standing ovations), just as poems in this book speak to us all, Spanish-speaking or not.
Neruda had told me before the reading, "I love your wide-open poetry" — by which he meant, I believe, the poetry of the Beat Generation that we had published in San Francisco and some of which had been published in translation in Lunes de Revolución (the Monday literary supplement to the big daily).
And I answered, "You opened the door." I hope this edition will open the door for the greater American public. We all need these messages.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
San Francisco, January 2004
It's all Greek to me ;-D
Stephen Halliwell GREEK LAUGHTER A study of cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity In the third century BC, when Roman ambassadors were negotiating with the Greek city of Tarentum, an ill-judged laugh put paid to any hope of peace. Ancient writers disagree about the exact cause of the mirth, but they agree that Greek laughter was the final straw in driving the Romans to war. One account points the finger at the bad Greek of the leading Roman ambassador, Postumius. It was so ungrammatical and strangely accented that the Tarentines could not conceal their amusement. The historian Dio Cassius, by contrast, laid the blame on the Romans’ national dress. “So far from receiving them decently”, he wrote, “the Tarentines laughed at the Roman toga among other things. It was the city garb, which we use in the Forum. And the envoys had put this on, whether to make a suitably dignified impression or out of fear – thinking that it would make the Tarentines respect them. But in fact g...
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